For years, corporate conversations about artificial intelligence have been dominated by the question: does this technology actually work? Now that we’ve found it does indeed work, corporate attention has turned toward how AI will be embedded into all areas of business function.
To discover the answer, we undertook a survey of C-suite and VP-level executives of Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies to find out their attitudes on how AI will change the way their business functions. The survey was conducted during the AI CEO Summit, an exclusive event from the creators of the AI Infra Summit, held in April 2026, with an exclusive sample of 29 respondents.
A positive outlook
The results of the survey paint a positive picture. An overwhelming majority of the respondents showed bullish attitudes toward the potential of agentic AI, believing that there is still much ground to cover before the technology reaches its full potential. When asked about the hype surrounding AI’s potential, 50% of respondents said it lived up to the hype, with 25% remarking that it is in fact being under-hyped.
What we found was a discussion which had moved far beyond scepticism or the apocalyptic narratives that have dominated public discussion, and instead discovered a state of play where AI is rapidly becoming the operating system of modern business. Some leaders taking part in the research shared that AI had already saved their organisations hundreds of millions of dollars, with participants agreeing that the real transformational benefits of AI will go beyond augmenting existing roles, to re-designing work to make it AI-native.
However the limiting factor for enterprise scale AI is the organisation, rather than the technology itself. There is still a need for clear ROI-driving use cases, beyond coding, and the enterprise payoff for hundreds of billions of dollars of hyperscaler CapEx is still far from certain.
AI as a core part of corporate strategy
Perhaps the most striking finding was that 95% of organisations surveyed have moved AI beyond the pilot phase in their organisations. For them, the era of proof-of-concepts and limited trials is largely over, with nearly two-fifths of respondents saying that AI is already embedded in their core products and corporate strategy. This matters because it signals a profound shift in executive thinking, from working out if and how AI can function in their business, to how quickly they can integrate it, scale it, and reorganise around it.
Of course, the numbers from our survey are only representative of the very top companies in the US and the world, and therefore they do not necessarily represent the state of adoption outside of this privileged group, plus those attending an AI event such as AI CEO Summit already had some degree of buy-in. However, as leaders it may show some indication of the direction of travel across the industry.
AI for coding is unquestionably the breakaway enterprise use case today, supposedly driving huge revenues at Anthropic, to the extent that this can be discerned from a private company.
Outside of coding, it is still unclear whether AI is going to provide enterprises with sufficient value, in terms of new ROI streams or organisational efficiencies, to justify its cost, and ultimately to justify the enormous capital expenditure from infrastructure companies that is propping up US GDP growth and, by extension, the US economy.
However, the views expressed by this group of executives leading some of the world’s largest enterprises did seem to quite emphatically underwrite the value of AI deployments in their organisations.
Selecting a model for change
Despite the marketing claims of countless AI vendors promising revolutionary new models, the overwhelming majority of organisations are not betting on a single proprietary solution. Instead, 85% are pursuing a hybrid approach, leveraging foundation models from technology giants such as Microsoft, Google and OpenAI while simultaneously building proprietary layers on top.
This is an important indication for businesses still formulating their AI strategy. Competitive advantage does not come from training foundation models from scratch, but instead how organisations can apply models to their own data, workflows, customers and industry expertise. Although the foundation model is becoming a commodity, differentiation lies in the layer above it.
The financial implications of AI
The financial implications of AI integration are equally significant to its adoption. More than a third of leaders surveyed said their organisations are actively cutting traditional IT spending to fund AI initiatives. Another 46% reported securing entirely new budgets dedicated specifically to AI. Together, these figures reveal a reality that many technology leaders have quietly recognised for some time: AI is becoming a strategic priority capable of reshaping investment decisions across the enterprise.
This budgetary shift is likely to accelerate as it becomes tougher to ignore the technologies reportedly delivering savings worth hundreds of millions of dollars. As AI becomes more deeply embedded in operational processes, spending on legacy systems will surely come under increasing scrutiny.
The future of work
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the survey concerns employment. Public debate around AI is often framed as a simple story of automation and job destruction, but our data suggests a much more nuanced picture.
We found that the executive community remains divided. While 48% of respondents expect headcount reductions through automation or the replacement of certain roles with AI agents, 52% believe workforce numbers will either grow or remain stable. Fourteen percent anticipate net new hiring, while 38% believe AI will allow organisations to produce significantly more output with existing teams.
This split is revealing because it demonstrates that there is no consensus among those closest to the technology. While AI will undoubtedly eliminate some tasks and potentially some roles, many leaders view it as a catalyst for growth rather than contraction.
The challenge ahead
Whilst the outcome of our survey should go some way to helping the AI bulls rest a bit easier, it doesn’t necessarily mean that AI will inevitably take root in enterprises in a very significant, or more importantly, profitable way. There is a route to embedding AI in organisational culture, operating models, and workforce design – but how far it goes remains to be seen.
